Helvetica: The Movie on PBS

Set your VCR’s and DVR’s! Depending on where you live, you will get a chance to catch Helvetica, on your local PBS station, either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. The full-theater release was about 80 minutes long, but they have condensed it to 50 minutes and are airing it as part of their Independent Lens series.

You can go here to see when it’s showing in your area. If I’m reading the schedule correctly, it first will air, in my little corner of Birmingham at midnight, Wednesday, January 7th.

BTW, I took the quiz and it turns out that the internet thinks I am Times New Roman. Not sure how I feel about that. It could have been worse I guess (can anyone say Comic S***?).

Paperback Book Sale in Birmingham

The Emmet O’Neal Library is hosting one of its one-in-a-blue-moon Friends of the Library Paperback Book Sale on Tuesday, January 6th. The sale will run from 9am to 9pm. I’m always amazed how many great condition books these folks are able to collect.

If you plan on going, please try and go late in the day… so I might have a chance to pick through the offerings first! 🙂

Crowdsourcing Publishing Model Fails

JPG Magazine broke out with a bold content generation plan a couple of years ago: bring a “photo enthusiast” print magazine, they would scour the internet for the best of the best non-professional images and reprint them in their pages. It’s always been a fun magazine to flip through. As innovative as this approach was, their business model was not so much, as they relied on ad sales to support the printed product.

In my opinion they made a VERY good run at it and I am sad that they are closing up shop. You can get the full run-down from their blog. At a minimum, they are one great case-study for publishers everywhere trying to divine the future of print media. I just wish Laura and crew could have made it.

Books, Publishing and Birmingham